Around the world

From the cockpit of the single-engine plane, Giuseppe Caltabiano looked out into a bright ocean filled with ice. The onboard compass began to drift, and he knew he had made it to the North Pole.

Caltabiano, along with his friend and co-pilot Jack Long, spent this summer working his way through the northern half of a polar circumnavigation of the Earth in a Pilatus PC-12 plane. If they successfully complete the southern half of the trip by the end of the year, they could become the first pilots certified for completing the polar circumnavigation.

“Nobody has ever done it before in a stock single engine plane, I learned that after we embarked in this,” Caltabiano said. Other pilots have made similar trips but in modified planes, he noted, this time, the goal was to do the trip in an “off-the-shelf” aircraft.

The most recent trip, which they hope to complete by flying the southern half of the journey before the end of the year, was the sequel to their last trip around the world — both trips came after Long called Caltabiano pitching the trips as items on his bucket list.

Two years ago Long talked Caltabiano into flying around the world together, starting from Long’s home in Austin, Texas, and heading east until they returned to Austin. The two knew each other from the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association, a nonprofit membership group for pilots.

“He called me and said, ‘Giuseppe, one of my bucket list items is to go around the world with my own plane. But you and I always talk about safety, and one of the things we talk about is that if you have two pilots in the cockpit, statistically it’s always safer than having one,’” Caltabiano recalled.

That trip included Long, Caltabiano, Josh Marvil, Jerry Seckler and the pilots’ wives. Some pilots would join in at different cities along the way while others left. Caltabiano made it to Turkey before stepping off the plane, about one-third of the total journey.

After completing their first trip around the world in 2015, the pilots received a “Circumnavigator Diploma” from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world governing body for air sports.

The conditions for a polar circumnavigation, according to the FAI, include flying a course of at least 34,000 kilometers, flying to a control point north of 75 degrees and south of 75 degrees latitude, crossing the equator twice at points at least 90 degrees apart longitudinally and doing all of this within one year. While many eastbound and westbound diplomas have been awarded by the FAI, none have been handed out for the polar trip.

Growing up in the air

“Since I was a child I was flying little airplane models,” Caltabiano said, holding up a model of a Cirrus plane in his office at NXGEN International in Whitefish. Caltabiano is president of NXGEN International, a payment services business with more than 20 offices serving 30 countries around the world.

Caltabiano grew up in Milan, Italy, a country that’s not great for private flying, he said. Instead, he joined a glider club, flying a type of unpowered aircraft that uses the same naturally occurring currents of air that birds use to fly.

“That actually taught me how to fly,” he said, “because if you can fly a plane without an engine, then when you have an emergency on a plane with a propeller, it’s a lot easier to deal with.”

“I remember when I was younger if I had a tough day of work, on Saturday I would take my glider and go flying over the Italian-Swiss Alps at 18,000 feet, seeing these huge mountains. Below, if I looked south, there were moments where I could see the two seas — I could see Genoa on one side and Venice on the other and the beginning of the peninsula going south, that was amazing. That’s what I love about flying.”

After serving in the Italian Navy at Livorno, he began his career in the payment industry, installing some of the first retail payment systems in Italy before moving out of the country at age 32. Since then, he and his family lived all over the world before settling in Whitefish 11 years ago.

Heading North

For the polar circumnavigation, the pilots on Aug. 10 left Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the trip was underway. The first leg went through Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Keflavik, Iceland and Newcastle, England. Then they made their way to Akureyri, Iceland, where they crossed the 75 degree north latitude requirement for the trip. After that, Ilulissat, Greenland, Iqaluit again and back to Duluth, Minnesota, in the United States on Aug. 30. As a rule, the pilots don’t fly an hour before sunrise or after sunset, so most of the day is spent flying. Each pilot does a five and a half hour trip, while another pilot sits in the cockpit with them. When a pilot isn’t in the cockpit, he’s usually resting, Caltabiano said. When they make stops, they spend one day relaxing after flying all day, the next day sightseeing and the day before departure planning the next six days ahead.

On the ground, Caltabiano said it’s important to get some relaxation time after being cooped up in the plane for hours and hours.

“The social dynamics, you have to be very careful to make sure the relationships keep going. It’s like camping through the Bob Marshall for three weeks,” he said.

The Long way down

The pilots dubbed the 2015 trip “around the world the Long way,” a play on Long’s role in the journey. For the polar trip, Caltabiano suggested it be called “the Long way down.”

And down is where the challenges lie. The northern hemisphere is far more populated and regulated than the south, Caltabiano said, where a new set of issues arise.

The flight plan for the southern half of the polar trip is set to leave from Austin, Texas, and fly from Albany, New York, to St. John’s, Canada. From there they’ll hop over the Atlantic to Santa Maria, Portugal, before cutting south through Cape Verde, Ghana, Brazil and Argentina, finally stopping at Punta Arenas, Chile. Punta Arenas is the launching point for King George Island, Antarctica, where they’ll hit their 75 degree south requirement before heading back north.

The problem is that it’s not easy to get access to Antarctica. Caltabiano recalled a conversation with the head of a British base, Rothera, where he was trying to plan a landing.

“I called and spoke to the chief pilot in Rothera and he asked me, ‘are you related to the Queen of England? It doesn’t matter if you say yes because even she cannot land here,’” he said.

In addition, the pilots have to arrange delivery and pickup of fuel at Antarctica. To top it off, the weather at the South Pole is wildly unpredictable.

“The reason nobody’s ever done it is because people do get all the way to that point we’re talking about in King George Island, and then they sit there hoping for the weather to let them go all the way south and they don’t manage to. So they have to go back,” Caltabiano said.

They’re still waiting on final approval to hop from Chile to Antarctica, but Caltabiano is optimistic about the process. Once they’re cleared, the group will get ready to head south in the winter.

The next adventure

After the polar journey, Caltabiano is considering becoming a fully licensed aviation instructor. He wants to be able to share his passions for both flight and flight safety with pilots and hopefully inspire the same adventurous spirit that drives him and Long.

“It doesn’t mean I want to do it to charge people and make a living,” he said. “It’s for the fun of teaching youth the surreal miracle of flying, and that this thing that weighs 3,400 pounds all of a sudden detaches from the ground and flies. It’s amazing.”

“My favorite part about being up in the air is that it helps me put things into perspective. So there is a bigger being that has created all of this, and I have a glimpse of what it might look like from 30,000 feet looking down. Houses get smaller, cars almost disappear, traffic is not visible, and things that seem big on the ground take a measure of their own when you’re up there. It puts things into perspective. Say you had tension with your son, then up there you have to go around a storm that can kill you — things get put into perspective.”